You're Going The Wrong Way

Day 4: Grasmere to Patterdale
Miles today: 5.62
Total miles: 50.13

A couple of days ago we ran into a couple of English guys near Black Sail Youth Hostel. As we were heading out of Grasmere, they were heading into town. After a little discussion, they realized they had been going the wrong way so they turned around and started back up the hill with us. That's right, the day started out with another big climb.

As we walked along we visited a bit with the two guys who we learned were Ray and Mark. They are the ones who are doing the walk and camping. They had gotten wet the night before and were cold and soaked through. I asked why they decided to do the hike and Mark said "too much to drink one night." I guess that's as good a reason as any. They were from the Leeds area and really seemed to be nice guys. Ray is married with kids, but Mark has never been married. He said he'd been engaged twice but got cold feet both times and backed off. I told him in that case I would not introduce him to my daughter.

As we were walking, it was pouring rain. Buckets of rain. I couldn't see anything. As we started climbing higher, Ray and Mark went on ahead of us. I was very sore from falling the day before and was feeling a bit discouraged. Just awhile later, I asked Jim why we were doing this. Here we were in one of the prettiest areas of England and we were wasting our time slogging up the hill in the rain. By the time we would arrive in Patterdale we would be too exhausted to do anything. So we went back down the hill and looked up the bus schedule.

After we were on the bus for a bit, the weather turned nice and we had a beautiful tour. At the bus stop we were chatting with a local couple. They sat behind us and explained everything we were seeing. It was great.

We had to go to Patterdale via Penrith and when we arrived another man came up to us and said he had overheard we were going to Patterdale and that we would have a wait for the next bus. He suggested a nearby cafe and as we were in line at the cafe, he came running up to give us a bus schedule. We are overwhelmed by how nice everyone is.

Penrith is a nice town and we wish we had more time to look around. We had to catch the bus, though, so will have to go back another time.

It was a gorgeous bus ride around Ullswater (a huge lake) to Patterdale. When we walked into town we saw our German friend from a couple of days ago and he said Mark and Ray had just come through. The German guy's name is Asad and we were glad to see him. He was having a terrible time with blisters and we thought maybe he cut his walk short. He did what we had done though, gotten a ride to Patterdale. He caught the Sherpa Van and didn't walk at all that day. We ended up walking almost the same number of miles as we were supposed to...just in a different direction.

Asad was staying at the same B & B as us so we had a beer with him that night.  We didn't see Mark and Ray tonight but hopefully we'll catch up with them later on the trail.

Photos from today--not too many because it was raining too hard when we were walking.

We stayed at The Old Water View tonight.

Supposedly it was one of Wainwright's favorite inns along the path. Probably because of this view.